VIM is a very powerful command line text editor that is loved by experts and often hated by novices, mostly because it has a fairly steep learning curve that may seem unintuitive to those who aren’t familiar with it. Even something as simple as quitting out of VIM can seem like a challenge to those … Read More
Many Safari users have noticed that when trying to save a raw audio file or video file that is loaded directly from the web within Safaris media viewer tab or window, the “Save As” default option will bring about a ‘.webarchive’ file – not exactly the multimedia file that users are looking to save. This … Read More
Most longtime command line users rely on the cp command to copy files and directories, but Mac OS X offers another solution with the ‘ditto’ command. Ditto is slightly more advanced but can be advantageous to ‘cp’ for several reasons, as it not only preserves ownership attributes and permissions but also file resource forks and … Read More
We’ve covered how to install OS X Yosemite onto a separate partition of an internal hard disk and dual boot with OS X Mavericks, but many Mac users have wondered if it’s possible to install OS X 10.10 onto an external drive instead, thereby avoiding any modifications to the primary Mac hard drive or partition … Read More
If you can’t wait until the fall to get your hands on OS X Yosemite, and you don’t want to cough up the $99 to get a Mac Developer Account just for the current Developer Preview access, Apple provides all users with a third option; joining the official OS X public beta program. The OS … Read More
OS X Yosemite is an amazing update to the Mac operating system that’s really better experienced than seen, but due to it’s current early beta status, it’s generally not a good idea to upgrade your primary OS X volume to the 10.10 beta quite yet. Instead, the safest approach is to install OS X Yosemite … Read More
OS X Yosemite will be one of the most exciting updates to Mac system software in many years, complete with an all new user interface, major iOS integration, and tons of new features. Of course all the excitement surrounding Yosemite is largely useless if your Mac won’t actually run OS X 10.10 when it launches … Read More
OS X Yosemite offers a major visual redesign of Mac OS X, with heavy usage of translucency, transparencies, redesigned icons, a new appearance to the Dock, a completely redesigned Notification Center, and so much more. Set to be released this fall as a free download with tons of features to go along with the visual … Read More
The next major Mac operating system, OS X Yosemite, will be released to the public this fall. While a specific release date has yet to be announced, fall of 2014 officially begins on September 22 and ends on December 21, offering a vague timeline for the launch and to expect when all Mac users will … Read More
OS X Yosemite is the next major release of the Mac operating system. It’s set to be a whopper of an update for the Mac, with a major new user interface overhaul and a slew of amazing features. Let’s take a quick look based on what we’ve seen so from the OS X Yosemite presentation … Read More
Many Mac users choose to put their computers to sleep when they’re not in use, and unless Macs are scheduled to wake at a specific time, the computer should stay asleep until it has been manually awoken by user input, like a key press or mouse click. Should of course is the operative word here, … Read More
The Mac file system received tabbed window support in OS X Mavericks, which also caused opening new Finder windows into launching new tabs rather than an actual new Finder window. While this helps to cut down on window clutter when browsing the file system, it can also be kind of frustrating if you want to … Read More
Many Mac users rely on iPhoto for their image management and to pull pictures from a digital camera, an iPhone, or Android, a generally flawless experience that makes handling tons of digital pictures easy. But once in a blue moon iPhoto goes awry and you may experience a variety of peculiarities with the image database, … Read More
Creating a series of nested directories within one another can be done instantly through the command line. This makes it very easy to immediately and recursively create a complex directory structure of folders within subfolders of subfolders, without having to navigate manually into each directory to create a new directory, then navigate again to that … Read More
Graphics and large stylized text blocks constructed entirely out of the ASCII keyboard characters is called ASCII art. You may have seen it with the goofy ASCII Star Wars thing, but once upon a time it was very popular to stylize messages and images on BBS’s, IRC, MUDs, message boards, and across the early days … Read More
The next time you’re at the command line and need to eject every single mounted volume, hard drive, disk, disk image, and/or external drive attached to a Mac, you can instantly eject them all in one fell swoop with a handy osascript command string. This is great if you work frequently in the Terminal and … Read More
Mac OS X comes with a bundled port scanner tool, just one of a variety of features tucked into the ever useful Network Utility app. That means you don’t need to bother with the command line or install more advanced tools like nmap to quickly scan for open ports on a given IP or domain, … Read More
Ever needed to remotely check the battery level of a Bluetooth keyboard connected to a Mac? Or maybe you’re just a heavy Terminal user and wanted to see the current battery life of a wireless keyboard without having to leave the command line? You can do that easily through the Terminal of either a remote … Read More
